Thursday, January 5, 2012

how to cook dinner with no hands.

evie is currently cutting FOUR STINKING TEETH. at one time. and one of them is a front tooth (the other front tooth is already in) and boy do i feel sorry for her. and for me. but mostly, for me.

i mean her.

when these teeth all show themselves she will have EIGHT STINKING TEETH in her mouth and now doesn't that just seem wrong? she is the size of 6 month old (barely) and i worry that her teeny tiny little body won't know what to do with all of those teeth. i mean, i could feed her a pbj if i wanted to (she could seriously bite and chew it) and when she smiles, it's not gummy in the slightest. she has all these teeth in that baby mouth of hers and i have to brush them. it's weird.

when evie isn't teething she's a peach. happy, independent, content, made up of rainbows and sprinkles and sunshine.

when evie is teething the storm clouds roll in over the valley and suddenly it's all drama all the time. where she is typically happy to play by herself, teething evie wants me right there, right beside her, the entire time. where she usually sleeps 12 hours at night, teething evie wakes up at least once or twice and just wants mama to hold her for an hour or so while she goes on and on about how much she hates to teeth (i'm with ya, sister!). where normal evie usually allows me cook dinner while she jumps in the bouncer, teething evie is like HOLD ME! NOW! AND DON'T YOU GET IT I AM TEETHING!!!!

in case you can't imagine teething evie, here is a visual:

teething evie has been staying with us for over a month now, and gosh that teething evie is so much fun! sassy, too!

as a result of all of this, my dinners have been suffering. the husband has been working really late this month, so it's just me and teething evie when 6pm rolls around and i seriously need at least 4 more arms.

the other day i had planned to make pioneer woman's penne a la betsy (a favorite of mine) which is actually a very simple pasta to make, except it requires the deveining of shrimp (wherein you rip the shrimp's veins from their fleshy little bodies one at a time) which can be a bit tedious and time consuming and might cause a mother to say to herself as she cuts open those little suckers while her baby cries and tugs on her pant leg "what the hell am i doing?!"

needless to say, i had to re-think my dinner ideas. which is where blessed pinterest comes in, because i am certain i got the idea from there (except i cannot find a specific pin) and last night, i kid you not, i cooked dinner with no hands.

first i dispersed some refrigerated biscuits onto a baking sheet really quickly while still holding teething evie
on my hip. next, i sprayed a muffin tin and filled each slot with 2
slices of ham, a little pat of butter, one cracked egg and plenty of
s&p.

i threw the biscuits and the eggs into the oven for 15 minutes during which time all mothers were free to hold their babies and no one was mad at me!

5 minutes before the timer went off, i threw a slice of cheese on top of each egg and then hurried and picked teething evie back up of the ground before she freaked her freak, and as she got started on our dinner, i even found the time to blend together a little berry+greek yogurt smoothie for dessert.

teething evie channeling her old self and loving our dinner

i have to tell you, people, the whole dinner was just simple and delicious (and the leftovers went to work with g disguised as breakfast). and my husband totally liked it better than the penne a la betsy from the night before, which blows my mind, but whatever. guys are weird.

this was definitely not the worlds most impressive dinner, but you try cooking anything with teething evie around, IT IS NOT EASY!

ps. before you say it, yes i know you can buy shrimp already deveined. sweet g bought them for me and he thought that they were

pps. teething evie is up from her nap and i don't have time to edit, so yes, you probably found at least 25 typos.

15 comments:

my stomach is growling reading this. i laugh so hard every time you throw in hell and i'm just feeling so proud of you being an all star mom. sorry about the teething death experience but thank you for blogging again. december was sad.

cool biscuit sandwich thingies! That's fun! Poor you & Teething Evie!! I think I'm going to print out that first picture of her and hang it on my wall. What a doll! It makes me smiley & happy, that cute little face! Bus outta there teeth!!!

I LOVE pioneer woman and here cook book! It's great that you get a glimpse into her life as your cooking dinner - Penne ala Betsy is one of my favs too, but maybe it's because of her sister (I love my sis!) Sorry to hear about Teething Evie! That's really hard because you just don't know what to do with them to help the pain and make them happy again! Hope those teeth make an appearance soon!